The Boxee will handle this, but so will most media players out there. Most that I know of can take an external drive or source through USB to then play on your TV or whatever. So really if that's all you need it to do, you options are pretty wide open. You'll find differences on the types of containers that are supported by each player, and the UI experience will be different as well.

Boxee Box, and WDTV2 do not stream HD sound. So, if you are picky about sound quality like me you will get something else.

However, I did buy a WDTV2 for my parents. They don't care much about HD sound or video, and they love it....well they pretty much love pandora. Everything else was second to them.

My dad is a truck driver. So, I am trying to convince him to let me install a 23 inch monitor, with a WDTV2 in his truck so he can watch movies from an external hard drive, and put all his music there as well.

I really don't care about the streaming sound, as long as the sound is fine from playing dvd files

The Boxee Box has no issues streaming the legacy audio that DVDs have(DD and DTS). It will also stream the advanced audio codecs too, but it will have several audio dropouts during a movie when streaming Dolby True HD, DTS-HD MA, etc.
They say they have a fix for the audio dropouts coming out soon. But only time will tell if that is true.

Once they close the hd audio issue, there will be a lot to like about Boxee Box. It will be the best single all-in-one local media + web content + live TV box in the market. I know people have had buffering issues and so on, but maybe because most of my 1:1 BD & DVD rips are MKVs, I've not had those issues.

Once they close the hd audio issue, there will be a lot to like about Boxee Box. It will be the best single all-in-one local media + web content + live TV box in the market. I know people have had buffering issues and so on, but maybe because most of my 1:1 BD & DVD rips are MKVs, I've not had those issues.

Exactly what HD audio issue here? I am in the market for a Boxee, Dune, etc... and want to pick the right great unit. Thanks.

It's not Dune or PCH. It has to do with the jukebox manager you're using, how you're naming files, and whether you have NFO files to avoid mis-identification. It takes a good deal of time on both PCH and Dune to set-up your local movies and TV shows so they're picked up and displayed properly. I personally prefer PCH (because YAMJ standards conform quite a bit to XBMC, which I also use), but Dune is equally good (Zappiti and Yadis).

Price-wise, also look at the PopBox v8. It's just $130 and supports YAMJ/Eversion to give you a terrific jukebox.

I have a Boxee Box but it freezes and stalls all the time and I can't leave it on and go back to it without it slowing down to need a reboot. It also seems to have issues with some audio after the recent update - some files started to have skipping audio where it was not before.

I need a media player that played MKV BD backups with DTSMA, TrueHD, LPCM 7.1 all streaming over a NAS.

Is there a better box these days?

P.S. - any web video, etc, is of no importance - I just want a local media player. It's even better to ONLY play local.

It's not Dune or PCH. It has to do with the jukebox manager you're using, how you're naming files, and whether you have NFO files to avoid mis-identification. It takes a good deal of time on both PCH and Dune to set-up your local movies and TV shows so they're picked up and displayed properly. I personally prefer PCH (because YAMJ standards conform quite a bit to XBMC, which I also use), but Dune is equally good (Zappiti and Yadis).

Price-wise, also look at the PopBox v8. It's just $130 and supports YAMJ/Eversion to give you a terrific jukebox.

Do you prefer the PopBox v8 over Boxee? Where do I find the information on setting up my local movies so that they display properly? What is YAMJ? Sorry I am real new to this. Thanks.

That's a tough one. If hd audio worked w/o dropouts on BB, I simply stick to it and forget the rest. But, because hd audio is broken, I have PopBox v8. For 3D ISO playback, there are very few choices: a Realtek 1186 player like HiMedia's HD900B or an Oppo BDP-93.

Boxee has said they've found the root cause of the hd audio dropouts issue & plan to fix it around March, but none of us really know when & whether it'll truly fix it.

For PopBox v8 and PCH A-300, look here for info on Eversion/YAMJ. YAMJ is a movie/TV scraper for your local content (movies & TV shows). Eversion is a Flash skin (a very nice one at that) that works with YAMJ.

Boxee has said they've found the root cause of the hd audio dropouts issue & plan to fix it around March, but none of us really know when & whether it'll truly fix it.

I'm sure looking forward to this fix I just wonder if it will bring a new bag of bugs with it since I believe it's a new SDK that has this fix? I hope not, I would love to retire my fleet of other media players and just have a good all-in-one (boxee) box.